Home is Together (A Supercorp Story)

Chapter Five

Lena stirred from the bright sunlight coming through her bedroom window and she made the mistake of looking right at it as she opened her eyes. Her head pounded against her skull so hard she had to lay back down.

She only had random flashes of the night before but none of them included a memory of how she got home. She remembered drinking way more than she should've at the bar and she remembered small bits of throwing up into a bucket on her bedside table in the middle of the night a few times, but that was it.

Lena slowly got up to look for anything that could ease her headache right now, already planning to make her way to work. Her lab was all she could think about. She dry swallowed two pills and drove straight to her company's building.

"Good morning, Ms. Luthor." Jess, her secretary, greeted her when the CEO walked past her.

Lena smiled, not really in a mood to talk. She quickly finished some leftover paperwork from the day before and rushed through a meeting, anxious to finish up what she was doing in her lab downstairs.

"Jess," Lena said, heading to the elevator after she finished her day's work. "I'll be downstairs."

Lena pulled out her phone immediately after the elevator door closed.

"Lena, what a surprise." Lillian Luthor's voice came through the speakers, dripping with sarcasm.

She rolled her eyes before replying. "I assume you'd like to see the finished toys."

Lillian didn't expect her daughter to finish her part of the plan so quickly and was slightly taken aback. Lena knew her mother always thought of her as the least capable in the Luthor household, Lex always being the most superior in her eyes.

"Since you want to see me so bad, I'll give you a nice surprise later tonight." Lillian hung up the phone before Lena could respond with her own snarky comment.

At this point, Lena had already gotten to her lab and had started to set up her equipment for the day. Her job was to mass produce a few hundred little robots and she had built her own program to make it for her a little while ago. She had always felt more relaxed in her lab than anywhere else, always having ideas and trying to execute them.

Her lab felt empty today. She wasn't filled with excitement when she looked around the room she had designed herself and she was bored for the first time. It was as if helping her family was physically and mentally draining for her.

Alex had been following her sister around for hours, trying to get her to pause and think.

"I have to tell her, Alex." Kara kept repeating. "She needs to know that she's being tricked!"

"She's mad at you right now." Alex tried not to sound annoyed. "She might think you're lying to her again and she'll fall deeper into the Luthors' trap."

Kara knew she was right on some level but she was willing to risk it. Lena deserved to know the truth and Kara had made the mistake of denying her of it for years. She felt guilty and she desperately wanted to try to make it up to her best friend.

"I have to try." Kara said.

"Her love for her family is so complicated and deep. It's completely different for her." Alex was still trying to protect her younger sister.

"Alex." Kara warned, her voice sounding more desperate by the second. "I have to try."

Alex stopped. Their eyes met and Alex realized she was being too harsh on her sister. She nodded her head, finally letting go of the matter, remembering how much Lena actually meant to Kara.